Misuse of Presentations

It's very commonplace to work somewhere where you're constantly bombarded with high level, generic presentations. To the point it's somewhat normal these days... but should it be? Do presentations offer the value we think they do? Are we using them correctly?

Thinking Differently

If we first put aside the concept of a presentation (which can have its merits) and instead focus on how the time could be used differently. Let's assume a presentation is 30 minutes, or even worse an hour (with questions at the end). If you were reading a book how many pages do you think you could read in 30 minutes, or even an hour?

Quite a lot it turns out! The average reading speed for a human is 200-250 words per minute, so in 30 minutes a person can read around 7,000 words! In fact the average human in 30 minutes could read 3,000 words, have a 5 minute tea break, then 5 minutes to absorb and reflect and a further 5 minutes to write some comments.

The Problems With Presentations

The problem with presentations are that they're used wrongly as a way of communicating information. It often manifests as presenters simply reading text from the slides, slides with too much text (squinting your eyes to read the text!), slides with too little detail (vague, uninformative) - and as a consequece people aren't able to absorb, reflect and engage with the information in the same way they can a written document. This is often evident during a Q&A session at the end as there's usually either no questions, or a few sporadic questions that lack depth. Presenters may blame people for not being engaged when it's the delivery mechanism that is at fault.

A side effect of remote working is that people now record presentations either for others to watch back or as a historical document. This has spurned an industry set on shortening videos or extracting the vague and undetailed text from them and does not solve the problem at its core.

It takes a long time to write text...

It does... but this gets easier (like everything) with practice. And time can be greatly reduced if your text is a living evolving piece, much like a strategy document, that constantly reflects, analyses and adjusts as you move through time. In such cases you need only make ammendments and notify people of those ammendments than write an entire piece of text each time.

Stepping back from being focussed on the time it takes to write text. The benefit of people reading detailed, engaging text, likely in their own time and having time to absorb, have a tea break, reflect and comment - This far outweighs 30 minutes of everyone joining a presentation (or watching a recording) to listen to vague information lacking detail and context. If you want an aware, informed team - the effort is worth the reward and will be reflected in their outcomes, decisions, designs etc....

So, no presentations?

Of course not! Presentations still have a place and can add real value. While not great for communicating detailed information, they are good for things where text can't be used or is of less use. A live demo, a thought provoking topic (where the slides assist the presenter, rather than drive the presentation - think TED talks) or when you actually want to communicate something thought provoking, vague, high level (like lightning talks). Whether these uses of presentations are done synchronously or asynchronously is a topic for another time!